Record adjusted EBITDA and GAAP EPS in one Q. So with that, I would like to introduce Jason Warnick, Chief Financial Officer at Robinhood. And then just prior to joining Robinhood in 2018, Jason held a variety of finance, accounting, strategy, and compliance leadership positions during his 20-year career at Amazon, where he was most recently Vice President of Finance and Chief of Staff to the CFO. So Jason, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks, Brian. Great to be here.
Great. Well, maybe just to start off at a high level, can you talk about the drivers of the recent strong momentum you are seeing in new account and asset growth this year? And to what extent do you think this is being driven by the market environment versus all of the initiatives in the 2024 product roadmap that are starting to bear fruit?
Yeah, we're seeing really strong net deposit growth at the company. You know, for some time now, we've been running in the 20%+ zone of organic growth in net deposits, and we saw a meaningful step-up in Q1. We said we had a record of over $11 billion of net deposits, and if you compare that to kind of the quarterly run rate that we saw in 2023, that was in the zone of kind of $4 billion-$4.5 billion. So big step up to over $11 billion in Q1. And, you know, I think it's several things. Customers are really responding to the great value proposition that we offer at Robinhood. But when we look at the net deposits, they're really diversified across the platform.
You know, one way to cut it is to look at where the deposits went inside the platform. About half of it went to brokerage. About 25% were taking advantage of the great 5% interest rate on our sweep program, and 20% went into retirement, which is an area that's continuing to grow. You may have noticed Vlad tweeted that we've crossed over $8 billion now, and so we were just over $4 billion two months ago at earnings. So really great growth rate there as well. It's fun to see retail engagement, and it's picking up, but it's really quite diversified.
Yeah, no, that's great, and it's pretty impressive growth in just a really short period of time. Maybe just... And we'll get into some of the segments and everything a little bit more, but maybe just on that, the recent acceleration of growth, and just can you give us a sense of the actual customer profiles coming to Robinhood in recent months, and any major differences versus the traction that you've had, you know, over the last one to two years?
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we're seeing is customers are bringing in larger balances. In Q1, the average balance was over $90,000 coming into taking advantage of the retirement offer, so $90,000 accounts on average coming in. And so really encouraging to see, you know, our customers kind of in all stages of their financial journey, and Robinhood earning the trust of even larger balances. We have three priorities, strategic priorities at the company. One is to be number one in active traders, two is increasing wallet share with our customers-
Yeah
... and three is expanding internationally. And I think, you know, the retirement product is really resonating on the increasing wallet share, and it's showing up in the larger accounts.
Yeah, that's great. Maybe just let's talk a little bit about the retirement match and then also the ACAT match. Just in terms of how you're generating that, maybe if you can go into some of the drivers. Is it more of advertising? Do you think it's more word of mouth, more of risk on behavior? And, you know, to what extent are you getting, you know, switches from competing brokerages, you know, that might be going through integration coverage?
Yeah, I mean, Robinhood has, you know, nearly 24 million funded accounts and a really vibrant network. And so word of mouth has always historically been a really strong way for Robinhood products and offerings to be communicated to the general public. And, you know, I'm sure that's certainly part of it as well. We've been stepping up our marketing as well. And, you know, just in my day-to-day life, I'm hearing people say, "Gosh, I hear that you're matching 3% on retirement. That's incredible." And so it's fun to watch the message get out there and customers respond.
Yeah. And maybe just to with... It's a good segue into the marketing spend. I think, I think you've, you've said you want to spend $100 million more on marketing this year versus last year. Can you talk about the different types of marketing strategies that you're embarking on, and how are you viewing customer acquisition costs with the new spend? Is it going up or being scaled, so it's actually, you know, going down?
Yeah, I mean, historically, word of mouth and the Robinhood referral program, where if you, as a referrer, refer a friend, you get, on average, $5 in stock, and the person who joins would get $5 in stock, and it was a very viral and effective method. Since that time, over the last year or so, we've been testing throughout 2023 at smaller scale, our ability to be more data-driven and target users that we think would be higher value. And we've been quite effective, and we watch this very closely. But the CACs are going up as we are targeting higher-value customers.
But the thing that we really look at is the relationship between the LTV of the customers that we bring in relative to CAC, and we love the relationship there.
Yeah. And just on that, how do you view the break-even timelines from the, you know, the CAC versus the revenue attribution? And on average, when do new customers become profitable after the related-
Yeah, kind of roughly in that one-year zone. You know, and, and again, we're being very data-driven in the way that we target these customers, and we watch their behavior to validate that, you know, our assumptions that are feeding into the data-driven marketing engine is in fact verified.
Great. Maybe just to stay with that theme, how do you balance the investment spend on new initiatives that may be, you know, either riskier or less certain versus marketing spend that's really well known, where you have a, you know, some demonstrable ability to tell that it's meeting your guidelines?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we need to do both. I think it's important to market and to increase awareness of the Robinhood brand and the Robinhood value proposition, but at the same time, we need to invest in the business. We've made a lot of progress, but we have a very full roadmap and a lot of things to build for customers, and I don't see that changing in the near future. So lots to do, lots to build. And we have a really great position with a strong balance sheet, and we're generating earnings and cash flow. So we're well positioned to do things like market, as well as continue to invest for growth, which is super important.
Yep, makes sense. I've got lots of questions to go on, but we do want to leave it open to the room, and anyone can jump in at any time, and we can certainly up for having a free-flowing discussion if anyone has questions.
Yeah.
If you just talk a little bit about product roadmap, some of the products you're most excited about over the next, call it, 12-18 months.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on at Robinhood. First of all, kind of a newer product for us is retirement, as I just mentioned, and it's been really fun to see, you know, customers invest their dollars for the long term with us. You know, this year, across the three strategic areas, we have a number of aspects. Maybe I'll focus on being number one in active trading. First, we're adding selection. So futures is on the roadmap, and cash-settled index options. Both are products that our customers are excited about, and we've been hearing from them, and we've been taking market share in active trading, even without cash-settled index options, which is one of the hottest market segments in that area.
Another area we're really excited about is the pro trader experience for the desktop, and that's coming out later this year, and the team's hard at work. When you look at the active trader segment, about half of the activity for active traders happens on mobile, where we have a presence, but the other half is on desktop, where traders want, you know, more features, more data, all visible on a larger screen space. And we're excited to bring that, bring that to customers later this year.
Maybe along that theme, you mentioned it on the active trade side, and it's certainly on the desktop. But can you talk a little about sophistication of the tools, on how you're evolving that? And then, you know, do you still think there's a very long way to go, or do you see it getting actually close to some of the leading peers? And then, I guess, just broadly, what proportion of your customers do you view as active traders, and how do you define active?
Yeah, you know, we define our customers basically based on their trading activity. And you know, I think they're internal designations, so not like a standard industry terminology that you know, we follow kind of a reverse power law, where a smaller portion of our 24 million customers account for the majority of the trading activity, and as you'd expect. In terms of what they're looking for, you know, they want to be able to have multiple charts. They want to be able to trade from the chart, have data readily accessible to them. And I think that there's a number of kind of core features that our traders would expect.
Mm-hmm.
But, you know, as I've talked to our product manager, who's leading the effort, I think that you'll find that there'll be moments of delight that Robinhood will bring that kind of up-levels the experience that the traders have interacting on the desktop.
Mm-hmm. Okay, maybe I'll add... Any other questions? I can, I can continue-
On the Gold Card a little, could you talk about kind of the ramp there?
Yeah. So, so the Robinhood Gold Card is our, our new credit card offering, offers 3% cashback. A great, easy, intuitive app to interact with, that can do things like create temporary cards or create an additional card for, you know, a family member, and, and very simply move your rewards right into your Robinhood brokerage account, with just a push of a button. So super seamless and, and, and intuitive, and really excited about that. We, we announced this, at a Gold event, recently and, have a, a wait list that's now over 1 million people that have expressed interest in the card. So really excited about that.
It is a new product for us, though, and so we're gonna be very mindful about how we roll out the card to our customers. We're starting with tens of thousands off the wait list, and we're gonna watch their spending behavior, their borrowing behavior, how they repay, and we'll take those learnings and apply it for the broader rollout later this year.
Is it fair to think about the card maybe on an interchange basis, it's close to breakeven with the rewards, and then you monetize via Gold, via Borrow and via, you know, the money going back into the ecosystem and trading?
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's roughly right. Roughly breakeven, it may be slightly negative.
Yeah.
But, you know, with Gold memberships that are part of the process for getting a Gold card, we think we have an opportunity here over time to generate meaningful earnings.
... Is it secured by the deposits in the brokerage account?
Not yet, but that's an aspect that I'm really excited about. I think, you know, there's a few benefits with us being a brokerage and offering a credit card to our customers. One is, if you secure it from a customer's perspective, you could potentially get an even better interest rate. Obviously, it would help us with anticipated loan losses. And so, and then the third aspect of that could be, you know, thin-file customers that maybe wouldn't otherwise qualify for a card. This would be an opportunity for them to qualify and to begin building credit through Robinhood.
Could you externalize the revolve piece? Maybe have someone put it on someone else's balance sheet and get, like, a fee for it?
You know, the way that we're approaching it now is, you know, we have the direct relationship. We, you know, we're facilitated through a couple of banking relationships, and over time, the capital markets team will look at ways to handle the balance sheet aspect.
Just out of curiosity, your issuer was Coastal?
Coastal Bank, yeah.
How did you come to them?
They were the issuer for X1, which was the company that we recently acquired to, you know, jumpstart the credit card product.
Maybe along the lines of that rollout, so tens of thousands have it now, and is it correct?
We've just started rolling it off. So in the first, you know, several months, that's the plan, is to get to tens of thousands, and then watch their behavior closely and learn from that.
Got it. Is the rollout planned to be staged, or is it flexible, depending on how you see the activity tracking?
Well, it will be, it will be, ultimately staged, but the idea is tens of thousands, probably relatively soon, so that we maximize the amount of time that we can observe behavior and apply those learnings.
Right. And then on the time of observation, is that months or quarters, or?
Yeah, it would be measured in months.
Months, okay.
Yeah.
Do you have a sense of when the whole full million might be able to...?
You know, I think we'll be in a position after we learn and observe later this year to be able to answer that better. But you know, certainly we would look to, you know, as fast as prudently possible get the cards in all the qualified users' hands.
Right. Right. And then maybe just on the balances, and I guess, how do you think about... Or, are the balances fairly standardized at this stage, or are they customized to the cardholder?
In terms of the credit limit?
Credit limit, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, the underwriting process would determine an appropriate credit limit for the customer.
Okay, got it. Got it. Okay. Maybe just pivoting to some other initiatives. Let's just talk about maybe trading and at, you know, the trading aftermarket hours. You know, we've heard, obviously, you know, more conversations about this notion being adopted more broadly. Talk about... I think we got some stats on growth and volumes, but maybe just talk about how you're seeing the revenue contribution coming through from, you know, overnight hours. I think you have 900 tickers now?
Yeah, 900 tickers. Our customers love the ability to trade, you know, 24/5, particularly when there's breaking news or earnings post post-regular market hours. And customers love it, and they're engaging with it more and more. In context, it's still early. Relative to the overall trading volume, it's still a relatively small amount of overall trading, but I think as you know, we're able to expand this program and it becomes more, you know, common to trade in after hours, it can become a meaningful portion of trading. It's also particularly helpful for our customers in the U.K., and as we expand internationally, it gives them 24-hour access to trading U.S. equities.
Yeah, and just maybe talk about, this could segue to the U.K. brokerage, how is that going?
Yeah.
Are they mostly trading U.S. stocks?
Yeah, that is the, that is the offering. We also offer the 5% interest on the cash sweep program, including FDIC insurance, over $2 million. So, customers there love that. I think what we're hearing is that they wanna see more of the full product suite that we have available in the U.S.-
Mm-hmm
made available to them, and that's something that we're working on. But good, strong, early signals, but it is early, and the main focus right now is rounding out the products for them.
Right. And is that mostly a 2024 roadmap, or is that a little bit-
Well, I mean, even like the U.S., we're constantly building.
Yeah.
So the work will never be done, but, you know, we're eager to roll out products as fast as we can.
Yep.
Is it only U.S. stocks right now?
It is, yeah.
And so what would be, like, the build-out to trade U.K. or European stocks? Kind of what has to happen there, and then how does that work without the order flow revenue? Like, how does the structure look?
Yeah, in terms of how we'll monetize, most of the revenue sources that are available in the U.S. are available in the U.K. So, things like margin lending, we'd anticipate that to be rolled out, securities lending, interest on uninvested cash. So, a variety of ways, and certainly an opportunity to introduce the Robinhood Gold subscription, as well. But you're right, that payment for order flow is not allowed in the U.K. But it's early, and we're really excited about the momentum there.
This is the trading fees there are still so shockingly high.
Yeah.
It seems like such a-
Good point
market's still ripe for-
It's really exciting to us. You know, our approach is always simple and intuitive and delightful user experience, paired with great value proposition, and-
Yeah
... we find that that resonates, and so we'll seek to find ways to deliver that kind of experience ... in the U.K. and over time, more broadly.
And the tax wrappers and all of that would be on the timeline, you know.
Those are-
Medium-term.
Yeah, short, shorter to medium term.
Shorter to medium term.
Yeah, in the U.K., the tax wrapper accounts, the ISAs and SIPPs-
Yep
- are definitely desired by the customers.
Just the $100 million marketing spend, does that contemplate the losses within the credit card product? Or what, what are kind of the big pieces within that?
So not in the marketing spend, but the costs associated with credit card are included in our overall OpEx guidance for the year, which at the midpoint, is up 5%.
Maybe just going on the U.K. brokerage, is the profile of the customers that you're getting in the U.K., is that similar to the general type of customer set that you're getting in the U.S.?
Yeah, roughly similar. I think it's probably a little too early to draw conclusions on the U.K., again, with the focus rounding out the product suite. And we haven't turned on marketing yet in the UK as we work on, you know, offering more products available for customers.
Maybe switching to the EU with the crypto offerings, or, you know, across the continent. Maybe if you can talk about, you know, how that's going, in terms of, you know, what kind of adoption you're seeing there. I know that's also very early stage.
Yeah, it is. Yeah, Brian, it's, it is also early stage, but we like what we're seeing, tens of thousands of customers across Europe and the U.K.. And, you know, in Europe, I think there's a bit more clarity on the regulatory front, and so it gives us a bit more opportunity to innovate and roll out products. For example, we have staking on Solana. We, we offer additional coins, and you should expect that we'll continue to innovate there, but we, we like what we see in the early days.
And that's interesting because, I mean, there's a lot of debate about the regulatory evolution of crypto here, obviously. Do you see, maybe over the, I guess it depends, but maybe over the intermediate term, 1, 2, 3 years, the EU market developing, you know, exponentially faster than your US, crypto?
That seems to be the path that we're on. You know, I think, you know, you've heard from industry that there, you know, it's a desire for greater clarity from the regulatory front here in the U.S.. You know, we seem to be making some incremental progress with, you know, the ETFs for Bitcoin, and now, for ETH seems to be queued up. So that's encouraging. But I think there's more work to be done to allow for the innovation. I think it's right that, you know, protecting individual investors is top of mind for the regulators. We want to do that, too, and we just need to find a way to clarify the regulations so that we really untether us and allow us to innovate faster.
Are you optimistic that will improve in the U.S.?
I'm optimistic by nature, Brian. You know, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how it plays out.
Yep.
But you've seen us over the last several years, really be the responsible crypto platform. You know, in response to, you know, indications from the SEC, we, we've curated our coin selection, been willing to take coins down. We've been very careful about the coins that we offer. We've avoided products and services that the SEC has indicated that they have concern about, things like staking or lending. These are all things that our customers are interested in, but we've really taken the experience that we have as a regulated brokerage and applied it to our crypto entity, and I think it positions us, you know, really well to be that kind of safe and trusted place to buy crypto, not to mention the lowest cost.
I mean, we have incredibly low costs, so if you're buying crypto elsewhere, you're likely paying more.
Mm-hmm. Similar to the theme of your business model.
Yeah, exactly right.
Yeah. Maybe sticking with the regulatory backdrop, how do you see market structure changes evolving and, you know, and the future for Payment for Order Flow for equities, given some of the market structure proposals?
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think Payment for Order Flow has been something for literally decades that has kind of come up and we've moved past several times in recent history. You know, I think we're at a point where you know there have been a number of market structure proposals, but we've responded as well as other members of the industry. It looks like we're past the you know ban on crypto con- or I'm sorry, on Payment for Order Flow conversation, which is encouraging, and we'll continue to you know advocate for our customers and respond.
But in terms of the three proposals that haven't yet been approved, it looks like it's on a track that it wouldn't be approved as, as written, and so probably some revisions would be necessary.
Mm-hmm.
We'll continue to work with and provide our feedback on those.
Yep, yep, that makes sense. Just, we just have T+1 settlement starting this week.
Yeah.
Any issues or so far, so good?
So far, so good. You know, it is, you know, relatively new for the marketplace, and it appears that it has gone off without a hitch. We certainly were very diligent in the transition plan, and all systems are green at Robinhood.
Okay, great. Great. Maybe just to switch to, I have a number of different topics here, but maybe, maybe let's go back to the Gold subscriptions. And, and, you know, there's obviously a lot of initiatives are firm-wide to get more Gold subscribers.
Yeah.
The credit card rollout being one of the latest ones. You're still charging $5 a month, given, and you've added a lot more value, including higher payments for cash balances. You've advanced that over the last year. Any thoughts of increasing that pricing, given you've added so much value?
Yeah, I think the point you're making, Brian, is it's a great deal. $5 a month, and it's amazing value in the Gold proposition. You know, one of the things that we're very mindful of is, when a customer is a Gold customer, they have 8 times the assets on average. They deposit funds twice as fast, and they adopt more of our products faster. In fact, if you look at retirement, Gold members are five times more likely to have a retirement account than non-Gold members. And so we're very mindful of the downstream effects, of being a Gold member. That said, we don't have a philosophy that would be opposed, to increasing price.
We're certainly adding a lot of value into the, into the bundle, 5% interest, soon, access to the Gold credit card with 3% rewards on all purchases. So, you know, it's something that we'll experiment with over time, but, certainly no plan in the short term. And, you know, ultimately, we want, you know, all of our customers to be Gold members, and we're at 7%, attach rate right now. New customers are attaching at, a much higher rate in the zone of 20%, which is encouraging. But, you know, given how valuable the Gold bundle is, we think we've got a lot of room to go.
Yeah, and why wouldn't anyone, everyone, just...
It should be a no-brainer, and that's really the approach that we're taking.
Is there... Are there marketing or I guess, is that part of the marketing spend, or is it just, is it
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. So, when I talk about, like, higher LTV customers, that's really talking about Gold, yeah, and targeting customers that are likely to join Gold and engage with us across our platform.
Mm-hmm. And just thinking about the subscription revenue that comes from Gold customers, the greater usage across your platform for the Gold customers, and thinking just about the revenue mix for the company. Obviously, you know, crypto trading is probably the most volatile aspect of the P&L. Thinking out, you know, who knows what crypto volumes are going to do in any given period, of course, but thinking out over the long term, you know, three-five years, how do you strategically think about making that revenue mix a little bit more stable? Obviously, keeping the growth profile.
Yeah.
Are there areas that you're investing in, you know, such as Gold customers or, you know, potentially raising price, raising that price, subscription price, or whatever it would be, to make that revenue stream a little bit more consistent, and help the earnings program?
Yeah, I mean, I think... So first of all, we're long-term bulls for crypto and are going to continue to innovate, both domestically, wherever possible, as well as, internationally. And I think there's a lot of room to go for crypto. On the, on the question of kind of a more steady, revenue stream, I think really the approach that we're taking is diversifying our business. And, and you're seeing that really take form here in the last couple of years, where if you would have gone back a couple of years ago, most of our revenue was, highly concentrated in trading activity, and now it's much more balanced. That's things like growing Gold, you know, investing in, new product categories like, credit cards or retirement.
Over time, it's things like going into AUM-based fee models, things like advisory, possibly RIA platform. These are all things that are, you know, on our minds and over a longer term. But I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to continue to advance the products that we offer to our customers, and we get the benefit of a more diversified revenue model.
Yeah. On the advisory side, that would be, like, a fee subscription type?
Well, I don't want to get too far ahead and declare how we would handle that, but we're certainly interested in advisory over time.
Yeah. Oh, go ahead.
Is there any correlation between crypto revenues and securities lending revenues?
I haven't really thought through the correlation between crypto and securities lending, because with securities lending, that's really, it's really based on the equities in the brokerage side of the house. And there's some, you know, market cyclicality around the securities lending business, particularly on the rebates that we'll earn. Sometimes there'll be a handful of names that are in much higher demand that will drive some excess earnings. But so far, I haven't seen anything that would draw a correlation with crypto.
What would be kind of the way to think about the outlook for securities lending? Just natural growth in the business grows with it, or is there anything that is a driver outside of that?
Yeah, the main inputs are, you know, continuing to improve the data and tooling that's available to the trading desk and enrolling customers into the program. We're making a lot of progress on enrolling customers in the program. Probably the best way to look at that is, assets enrolled, I think it's something like $14 billion, as of Q1.
What type of yield improvement enhancement do customers see if they're enrolled in the securities lending program? Clearly, it depends on the markets and the hard to borrow.
Yeah, and it just, it depends on the customer, and what they're holding, but we give them a share of the revenue, which is, a nice way for them to augment their yield.
Right. Okay. And it's meaningful enough for them to be enticed?
We're seeing really, really nice adoption and growth in assets enrolled in the program. So I think the answer is yes.
Yeah. Just one last thought on the crypto question that I had before. Another way to think about reducing the volatility of earnings, would there be a way to... I imagine incremental crypto volumes come in with very high margins, given you have a fixed cost base on it, and the revenue just simply comes in. Would there be a way that you'd flex expenses to, not that you try to reduce your margins at all, but therefore reduce the volatility of crypto on the earnings stream by, you know, expensing more against that?
Well, I certainly wouldn't, well, first of all, we've provided a range of OpEx guidance that's $100 million in the range. I think that gives us a lot of flexibility to flex up and down based on what we're seeing. I love our fixed cost OpEx structure, 90% fixed cost. We've managed our costs incredibly closely, and it is kind of demonstrated in Q1 when we saw outperformance on the top line, that most of that dropped to the bottom line with incremental margins above 70%, even while we're investing across so many different new initiatives. And this led to $0.18 of earnings when the street was expecting $0.06.
That's really the power of the model, that as we grow the business and we tightly manage our OpEx, we have a lot of leverage potential to deliver profitable growth, which is just incredibly exciting to me as a CFO.
Yeah.
How do you think about that, like, the medium term? Obviously, the product roadmap is exciting, and there's a lot in multiple geographies. So like, you know, how do you think about OpEx growth on a medium-term basis? You know, why not—you know, on one hand, you want to continue to deliver like you did in 1Q, on the other hand, could you hire a lot more and maybe accelerate some of these product rollouts? Like, how do you weigh those two?
Yeah. So first of all, I like where we're at in terms of our headcount. I mean, there's certainly, you know, opportunities around the edges to add some resources. But when we look at our product roadmap this year, it's pretty ambitious, and there's a lot going on against all three of our priorities, whether it's international, active trading, you know, rolling out a new credit card. So, you know, I think that, you know, growth is incredibly important, and we are investing for growth. But part of the opportunity is when we look at our fixed cost structure each year, finding opportunities to be even more efficient, and then taking those savings and applying it to the growth initiatives.
And so that really takes hold, you know, and is demonstrated by the OpEx guidance above 5%, even while we're investing across the, you know, the various strategic priorities and increasing our marketing spend by $100 million year-over-year. So I think we're really well positioned to manage our costs prudently, but also aggressively go after our growth opportunities.
So when we look at 2025, 2026, 2027 roadmaps, there's no reason why that fixed cost base would have to jump significantly, because this is a pretty big, this is a pretty active year, and you're handling it with the current.
Yeah, this, this is an active year. We haven't given guidance to the future, but, what I would tell you is that our management approach is to diligently question all of our costs constantly and find out ways to self-fund new, new asks. And so I think, you know, in the last couple of years, the operators of the company are very used to having to answer the question: How can I self-fund the ask that I have for something incremental? And nine times out of ten, they find a way to self-fund, which is just really exciting. We have a, we have a company value called lean and, and, disciplined. And, you know, I think company values are a great way to get everybody on the same page.
We're all on the same page on being lean and disciplined in the way that we manage our costs.
Yeah, that's pretty comprehensive. Maybe just talk about interest rate sensitivity a little bit. So first of all, you reduced your some pricing on margin loans recently. Maybe you can. Two-part question, maybe start off with that. You know, what kind of impact are you seeing in activity? And then secondarily, if we do get rate cuts at some point, how do you think about your sensitivity? It's kind of easy to do on the corporate cash side, but how would that play into your philosophy on the rates that you're giving customers on the cash?
Yeah. So first on margin rates. So yes, last week, we announced that we were lowering our margin rate table across the board to make it competitive. You know, I think IBKR has historically been the lowest published rates. I think that said, the other brokerages would have a process to offer similar rates to that to their customers through you know, you just have to call and ask for it. What we decided is we want to be competitive across the market in this space, and frankly, we weren't. And we've been taking market share gains across most aspects of our business, but margin loan and margin lending has been an area that we have been falling behind.
You know, frankly, we just want to take a reason off the table why customers wouldn't bring their business to Robinhood. I think this is, you know, another important step. You pair that together with, you know, competitive margin rates, a desktop pro trader web experience, adding futures, adding cash-settled index options, you start to see this, the coming together of the strategic priority of being number one for active traders. So I would just say that's a, you know, that's a part of that overall strategy. You know, it's only been a week, but we're already seeing positive signs on the margin book. So feeling really good about that, and we'll update when we have more data.
Do you have a desktop product now, or that's going to be a new launch?
It is a new launch. We do have a website, but it is essentially what you'd experience on the mobile app. So this is a completely new launch, new product, and it's meant for more sophisticated traders. Brian, you had a second piece on interest rate cuts and sensitivity. So there's probably a few points to make on interest rates. The first is that when we look at interest rates this year and the forward rate curve, we expect rates to be probably on average neutral to slightly positive versus last year. The second point I would make is, you know, of the $35 billion in interest earning assets, so a relatively smaller portion of that is actually sensitive.
And you mentioned the Robinhood Gold. For example, we're approaching $20 billion of balances in the Robinhood Gold. We have a spread of around 60 basis points, and that spread is fairly firm. And so as rates go up or down, we've been maintaining kind of that spread. And, you know, we're always mindful of where we are relative to the overall market, because we want our customers to have a great deal, but we feel really good about the spread that we have there. So it really desensitizes a big piece of the interest-earning assets from rate cuts. You know, in some balances, as rates go down, tend to go up, things like margin lending.
It's not that the balances, you know, the rates go down and the balances would stay the same or fall. Some of those balances would increase. And then probably the last thing I would say is that, you know, high or... You know, an environment of increasing interest rates has been a bit of a headwind for our business. And so, you know, we're excited to see, as the rates come down, interest rates move from a headwind into a tailwind for our business. And we do believe there's a natural hedge between rates and trading activity, and we're already starting to see that.
You saw it in Q1, as retail engagement was picking up, and that was a bit of we've reached the top of the interest rate cycle, and there's some anticipation for rates to start coming down again, which is encouraging.
Yeah, that'd be good. We have time for one more question, if anyone has one. I can finish up with the capital deployment. You just announced a $1 billion stock repurchase program to be executed over two-three years, I think.
That is correct.
Maybe just update us on the capital priorities, how you do the stock buyback in terms of other alternatives. You've been doing a number of small acquisitions over time.
Yeah, we have.
How do you rank those two?
Probably in priority order, I would say, you know, investing for organic growth, you know, opportunistically, deploying capital through M&A, to accelerate our product roadmap. And then lastly, returning some capital to shareholders. And I, I think we're incredibly well positioned to really provide capital in all three of those buckets. You know, we have a balance sheet with over $5 billion of cash and investments. We're in a position where we're generating positive earnings and cash flows. And so we think it's prudent to have a share repurchase program. You know, what I would say is, when I look at shareholder value creation, I really love the algorithm of increasing earnings and increasing cash flows, and decreasing shares over time.
And I think that delivers a lot of value to shareholders and it's a pretty powerful formula, and something I'm excited to say that we're embarking upon with this announcement. And then, of course, last year, we bought back a little over 5% of our shares in a single transaction as well. And so, combined with, you know, prudent management of, you know, shares that we give under the employee stock program, you know, we think our dilution prior to this announcement would be 2% or less.
Yeah.
I think we're well positioned with this announcement over time to manage that down and possibly lower the shares.
Okay, great. So that's good to know. My follow-up question on that-
Yeah.
But you answered it.
Great.
Great. Well, thanks, Jason. Thanks so much for being with us today. Really appreciate it.
Thanks, Brian. Always a pleasure. Thanks for the questions.